Introducing Libraries and Smooth Corners in Sketch 47

Sketch47 is here and, alongside a number of smaller bug fixes and improvements, this latest release includes one of our biggest updates yet. We’re introducingLibraries for Sketch, allowing you to sync and use Symbols across all your Sketch documents. As well as this, we’ve added the ability to create SmoothCorners — a must have for all iOS designers out there.

Libraries in Sketch

This is one of the biggest and most requested features we’ve ever added to Sketch. We know design is all about collaboration and with the new Libraries feature you can now sync, share and update Symbols, across all your documents and even with other designers. You can get a full rundown on how Libraries work in our documentation but here’s an overview of the most important features.

A Library works just like a normal Sketch document that contains Symbols, which you can then access and use in any other document. If you update a Symbol in your Library those changes will sync across all documents containing that component.

If you’re working with other designers, as part of a team, Sketch’s Libraries have got you covered. Simply place your document somewhere your colleagues have read-access, like a Dropbox folder, or GitHub repository, have them add the document to their Libraries in Preferences, and they will have quick and easy access to any Symbols in that Library. When you update the Library file, everyone with access will automatically receive the updated version, ensuring you’re all on the same page.

If you work alone, don’t worry, we built Libraries with everyone in mind. All of these features are just as useful for individual designers who want to manage, sync and update commonly used components across multiple documents with one Library file. We’ve already added our “iOS UI Design” template as a Library so you can start with these building blocks for your next design.

We’re really excited about Libraries and the advantages they offer for designers and teams who want to stay on top of managing their designs — ensuring they are using the most up-to-date versions of icons, or the latest branding from the company’s style guide.

Stay tuned for our next blog post, where we’ll be taking a closer look at Libraries.

Smooth Corners

Apple’s smooth corners are a signature of both their hardware and software. The iOS icon ’squircle’, introduced in iOS 7, is as much a part of the company’s brand as the Apple logo itself. With this update you can now adjust the curve of a rectangle’s corner radius to achieve this effect, used throughout iOS.

When you’re editing the radius of a rounded rectangle in Sketch, you’ll see the ‘Smooth Corners’ option underneath. Simply select the Smooth Corners checkbox to get curvature continuity on your layer’s corners and unselect it to revert back to normal.

Whether you’re designing for iPhone and iPad and need pixel perfect icons, or you simply want to take a leaf out of Apple’s design manual, Sketch 47 makes creating Smooth Corners quick and easy.

Many more changes, improvements and bug fixes

As usual we’ve made some smaller improvements to Sketch based on your feedback since the last update, as well as doing some essential bug fixes. Here are some of the highlights:

We’ve improved performance for shadows in complex documents

We’ve improved performance when editing nested Symbols

The shortcut for inserting a new point between two existing points in the vector editor has changed from Command-click to Shift-click

We’ve improved appearance of nested Symbols, Text Styles, and Shared Styles so that they’re no longer nested within superfluous submenus

We fixed a bug where the Inspector could be truncated depending on your scroll bar preference

You can find a full list of improvements and bug fixes on our updates page.

Sketch 47 is a free update for all users with an active Sketch licence. If you need to renew your license, you’ll get Sketch 47 and a whole year’s worth of updates after that.

We’d love to hear what you think of this update. If you have any questions or feedback about Libraries, you can get in touch with us via our support page or join in the conversation on Twitter, or on our Facebook group.

We’re already working on Sketch 48 and we’ll tell you all about it very soon.